Anne Hathaway Talks Catwoman In ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Recent conversations concerning The Dark Knight Rises have largely focused on the film’s main (bulky) villain Bane, touching on subjects like his mask-muffled voice, unsightly skin blemishes, and just why exactly director Christopher Nolan selected him to be the primary antagonist in his final Batman movie.

The full-length Dark Knight Rises trailer also provided a better look at one of the film’s more mysterious players: Anne Hathaway as the sultry Selina Kyle/Catwoman, an anti-heroine who (in keeping with her comic book origins) looks to oscillate between being a self-serving criminal and a comrade of Christian Bale’s Caped Crusader – depending on the situation.

Hathaway’s Catwoman costume has drawn the ire of (and praise from) many a fan, in part because of accessories like her (potentially deadly) stiletto heels and advanced techno goggles that, when flipped up, give the character her iconic cat ears. In a recent interview with Hero Complex, the Oscar-nominated actress admitted the practical nature of her Dark Knight Rises counterpart’s outfit is something that she very much admires.

To quote Hathaway directly:

“I love the costume. I love the costume because everything has a purpose, nothing is in place for fantasy’s sake, and that’s the case with everything in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City.”

On that note – Hathaway also had the following to say, with regards to how the nature of Nolan’s iteration of Gotham City and the Batman universe affects her take on the Selina Kyle/Catwoman character:

“[Chris Nolan’s] Gotham City is full of grace. You look at [Heath Ledger’s] performance as the Joker, there was a lot of madness there but there was also a grace and he had a code there. There’s a lot of belief and codes of behavior in Gotham and my character has one, too. A lot of the way she moves and interacts with people is informed by her worldview. Chris has given us all such complex, defined, sophisticated worldviews that it’s just a matter of doing your homework and getting underneath the character’s skin.”

Hathaway also says that she was heavily influenced by Catwoman’s traditional comic book mythology, but that her version of the character in Dark Knight Rises will still feel quite different from previous live-action incarnations. To quote:

“What’s come before doesn’t limit or even affect this new version [of Catwoman]. It doesn’t affect me because each Catwoman – and this is true in the comics as well – she is defined by the context of the Gotham City created around her. Catwoman is so influenced by Gotham and whoever is creating Gotham at the time. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was informed by Tim Burton’s Gotham and Eartha Kitt was informed by Adam West’s Gotham. You have to live in whatever the reality of the world is and whatever Gotham is.”

Based on the brief bits of footage unveiled so far, Hathaway does seem to have struck the right tone with Selina Kyle, who comes off as a more modernized femme fatale for Bruce Wayne – that is, a seductive woman with mysterious motives and shifting loyalty whose somewhat morally-ambiguous code of conduct is perhaps too close to Batman’s for the masked vigilante’s comfort. Because of that, it will be all the more interesting to see how the character fits into the fascinating jigsaw puzzle that is the plot of The Dark Knight Rises.

For more from Hathaway and a SPOILER-ish description of an important scene in The Dark Knight Rises, check out the full article/interview with the LA Times.

The Dark Knight Rises opens in regular and IMAX theaters in the U.S. on July 20th, 2012.